Picture Gallery: Sesley D-Day parade

THOUSANDS of people lined the streets of Selsey for its hotly -anticipated, and highly-successful, D-Day street festival.

The High Street was a hive of activity as live bands, children’s entertainers and food-sellers filled the town to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day.

A packed High Street.Picture by Kate Shemilt.C140570-29 SUS-140106-184555001

Teresa Spencer, who owns Delightful Things R Us, organised the entire event alongside Lynn Reeves, with proceeds from the day going to Help for Heroes.

And it wasn’t just a charity event for service personnel, but a morale-boosting one for the community, too.

“Morale has been rock bottom with shopkeepers here recently,” said Teresa.

“Morale really was on the floor. This event has given the High Street new hope. People believed nothing would change and things just couldn’t get better.

The band leading the parade.Picture by Kate Shemilt.C140570-12 SUS-140106-184200001

“We had around 40,000 people respond to the event when we posted it on Facebook, but had no idea how many might turn up.

“It’s been a fantastic day. It was hard work organising it, but it’s worth it to see Selsey become an exciting place once again.”

The festival was more than three months in the planning, and between them, Lynn and Teresa organised a Punch and Judy show, a jazz band, talent contest and a host of other street acts.

Stallholders contributed their takings to Help for Heroes, and locals joked Teresa deserved a medal for her hard work and dedication.

President of the Selsey and District Lions Club, Paul Senior, was on hand with ten other ‘lions’ to raise awareness of their club and sell tickets for their raffle and prize draw, with monies going to Help for Heroes.

Also working hard on the day was veteran Joe Roddis, who was signing copies of his book, In Support of the Few, and donating all the funds to the Apuldram Centre.

Joe – who met Prince Harry on his visit to Goodwood earlier this year – has a packed schedule this month, with several other book signing events in the pipeline.

He also paid for the air display which rounded off the day – with a Harvard from Goodwood flying over the town in the evening.

Teresa added: “Special thanks must go to all the marshals. Also to sponsors Stagecoach, Selsey Press for making the ration books free of charge, Oceanair, Terry and Ireland Plumbers, Colin Ireland, David Tindall for helping arrange marshalls, and Andy Lindsay from The Liquid Merchant, who stepped in to DJ at the last minute.”

See this week’s Chichester Observer (June 5) for all the pictures and more D-Day events around the area.

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